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AS one who poring on a Grecian urn
Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,
God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,
And for their beauty's sake is loth to turn
And face the obvious day, must I not yearn
For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,
When in the midmost shrine of Artemis
I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?
And yet--methinks I'd rather see thee play
That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery
Made Emperors drunken,--come, great Egypt, shake
Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay,
I am grown sick of unreal passions, make
The world thine Actium, me thine Antony!
Oscar Wilde
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Read poems about / on: sick, moon, beauty, god, world, passion
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Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde
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Albert Ahearn
(9/27/2009 9:03:00 PM) |
While carefully studying the Grecian urn he is reminded of Camma a Galatian princess and priestess of Artemis. She was wedded to the tetrarch Sinatus, and became known and admired for her virtue and beauty. Sinatus' rival, another tetrarch named Sinorix, murdered Sinatus and proceeded to woo Camma herself. Rather than submit to Sinorix' advances, Camma took him to a temple of Artemis where she served poisoned milk and honey to herself and him. Camma died happily, according to Plutarch, in the knowledge that she had avenged the death of her husband.[
The poet sees her in the center of the urn and thinks Camma should play Cleopatra with all the pomp and circumstance. Yet he grows weary of this and concludes that she make the world her Actium (Cleopatra and Mark Antony lost the war against Caesar at Actium.) Subsequently both commit suicide and died in each others arms.
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